When I was about 7 or 8, we went on holiday to a little cottage in Tenby. The cottage owners had a ginger tabby kitten called George. I’d not had pets, and didn’t really know anyone with pets at that time, plus George was a pinball shock of fluffy chaos, I was transfixed. I played with him for about an hour while my parents were doing something administrative about the cottage. It was that day that I found out I was allergic to cats.
I was wheezy, my eyes swelled shut and I was hoiked to an out of hours doctor who gave me antihistamines. A couple of failed attempts at rehoming rescues (my dad had patience for approximately 48 hours) was my closest interaction. For decades I would be mindful of being too close, or especially rubbing my eyes but cats were fine if I took cetirizine. Over time though, it has definitely lessened.
With me allergic to cats and Pam allergic to dogs we had house rabbits for years. They were adorable housemates, and their fur smelled of hay. I miss them, but since we moved the living room round we don’t have room for a protected space any more. Plus the yard gets lots of foxes. The rabbits all tended to stay downstairs, in ten years only one went beyond the shire, and only once. A cat could have the run of the house.
My biggest worry was that we took the plunge, got attached and my allergies were too much and we had to rehome an already discombobulated cat again. That’d be awful for us and them, we were always going to rescue. But a few trial runs with nothing worse than a bit of an itchy eye and I decided to take a little look at the SAA website, the same place we rescued all our Rabbits.
And there he was. “Chunky” Charlie.
A 10 year-old British Shorthair, he was found crying in a park with demonstrably no idea how to survive outside. He’s clearly had a collar on all his life but was found without one. The sanctuary are familiar with this kind of story unfortunately, and all too often they are abandoned - the chip details went nowhere, save the name he came in with and his date of birth.
I sent the picture to Pam saying that we should meet him, and a few days later we did, the SAA being just a ten minute walk up the canal. He’s a big old chap, 7.1kg when he came to us, and had spent the past 3 months at the SAA, the latter couple of weeks in a smaller quarantine pen as the larger pens flooded. I’d taken some antihistamines before I went and I spent a good amount of time getting amongst the dander, all signs looking fine.
Straight away, we knew. We just knew we had to try, allergies or no. A home check, some sage advice and 5 days later on 16th January Charlie came to live with us. Carrying him back down the canal path I was stopped twice by people cooing over him, marvelling at this ‘big, beautiful boy’.
We were all excited and nervous; after a slightly fractious first night with some tummy upsets and a small scratch, Charlie realised he had a home and we realised what a difference he made to our house immediately. The sanctuary had had him on a delicate diet because of his stressy tum and as expected, this settled completely in a couple of days. A bit of litter tray trial and error (high-peeing cats are a thing, we discovered) and we settled into a routine. Within the first week we learned about claw sheaths, hairballs, tear staining and scratching mats.
Its been less than 4 weeks and it’s like he’s always been here. We have breakfast together, he sits on a chair behind me when I’m working from home or on a chest behind Pam’s desk, depending on where the sun is. He is still on a slightly modified diet to manage his weight and snoring (which is heartbreakingly sweet) and Charlie has strong opinions about this - it’s clear he has been fed extras from the kitchen all his life, he knows the drill at dinnertime.
My photo cloud is full of pictures, I can’t stop staring at him in lovestruck awe. He has a catalogue of chirps and meows (mainly around the provision, or lack of food). His purrs sound like the Dilophosaurus that did for Denis Nedry in Jurassic Park. His ‘big stretch’, his tiny little nose, the way he has a favourite spot on a rug by the radiator, and leans into a good chin scratch.
My allergies have been mostly fine. I got a hair in my eye the other day, that wasn’t my favourite. My skin itches sometimes but it does in February anyway, its hayfever season. It all passes quickly. More importantly, my mental health has noticeably improved, my resting heart rate is lower and I sleep better even with the clockwork alarm call for breakfast.
As I sit here in bed typing this, he’s in between us snoring softly, our resolution to keep him out of the bedroom for ‘allergy reasons’ lasting all of 72 hours. We’ve made some good decisions in our 21 years together, meeting Charlie is up there as one of the very best. He’s 10 so we don’t know how long we’ll have with him, but every day is a blessing - he’s a grumpy, snoozy, frantic giant ball of fluff and I love him.